I typically try to make a post on days when something historic happens. Then, months and years later when I'm perusing archives I can remember what was happening in the world, and remember the tone under which I wrote what I wrote.

Today, two days ahead of schedule, the Bush administration surprised the world by giving up authority in Iraq to the Iraqi provisional government. Many pundits around the world said it wouldn't happen at all, including many in America. "America are imperial Zionist puppets," they said. "Bush will never give up all of that oil."

Today these people are, so far, silent. Today Iraq is rejoicing in being, for the first time in 25 years, masters of their own destinies.

Hail our true friends, the Great People of the United States of America; The Freedom giving Republic, the nation of Liberators. Never has the world known such a nation, willing to spill the blood of her children and spend the treasure of her land even for the sake of the freedom and well being of erstwhile enemies. The tree of friendship is going to grow and grow and bear fruit as sure as day follows night. And the people deep down at the bottom of their hearts, they appreciate. Make no mistake about that. The people have voted today, the pulse of the street is clear, without any hesitation I would give 90% of all Iraqis are hopeful and supportive of the new government, and this is a tacit indirect yes to the U.S. which has been the prime mover of all these events. This is what the foolish fail to understand. Why is this a different situation from that for example of a Vietnam? The answer is very simple: Because, the U.S. has achieved something very popular around here; which is the removal of the Saddam regime. Those who are really against the U.S. from amongst the Iraqis have been and remain a small minority; all other forms of resentment are simply disappointment and disgruntlement resulting from the discomfiture of the present situation and will simply disappear with progress and gradual improvement.
A Small Victory
HT: Ace of Spades HQ

In the coming days you'll hear the spin and all the reasons why this is really a bad thing, but today everyone seems hopeful.

Michael Moore, that is. There are a number of occasions, usually when he is overseas, usually in France, when he has said that he is embarrassed by his fellow Americans, because they're stupid, greedy, and fat. Talk about pot/kettle.

Take his deion of his fellow countrymen and their blind pursuit of the American Dream: "They are possibly the dumbest people on the planet... in thrall to conniving, thieving, smug pricks.

"We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing. National Geographic produced a survey which showed that 60 per cent of 18-25 year olds don't know where Great Britain is on a map. And 92 per cent of us don't own a passport."
pabaah.com

Keep that in mind when you pay to see his new science fiction movie: he thinks you are among the dumbest people on the planet. But, I'm sure he still supports our troops. Because they aren't among the dumbest people in the planet, they're just fools who were duped by a bunch of flag-rallying bullshit. Uh huh. What kind of closed minded, self hating American would actually take his insults to heart, and not question what he says?

In commemoration of his opening of his new propaganda, the following is a list of websites that use real fact to disprove Moore's made-up facts. Read them or don't, it's a free country. Michael Moore thinks you're too stupid to make informed opinions anyway. Go ahead and prove him right.

MOOREWATCH - "MOOREWATCH is dedicated to unearthing the truth behind the doublespeak and falsehood that spews from the mouth (and keyboard) of Michael Moore on a regular basis. Moore is a disingenuous danger to this country, and his assumptions and assertions should not go unchallenged. The collective expertise and research abilities of the entire Internet are more than enough to debunk most of the nonsense Moore regularly puts forth as fact, and we at MOOREWATCH hope to be the clearinghouse for this information."

Michael Moore Hates America - "Contrary to its title, Michael Moore Hates America isn’t a hatchet job on the filmmaker. It’s a journey across the nation where we meet celebrities, scholars and average folks alike, and we find out whether the American Dream is still alive! In the process, we’ll look at Michael Moore’s claims about the country, its people, and our way of life."

Moore Exposed - "Should a 320 pound man lecture us on the evils of over consumption?"

Bowling for Truth - "This website is here as a recourse to expose the distortions and dishonesty in fictitious film director Michael Moore's Oscar winning documentary, Bowling For Columbine. The point of this website IS a lot of things, but here are some that it is not: It is not to reveal a 'bias' in Moore's work. It is not to make the case for guns - I've never owned a gun, never shot a gun, and probably never even held a real gun; Guns scare me. It is not, in large part anyway, even to rebut Moore's beliefs. Rather, this site exists because Michael Moore is clever and glib and a very good film maker - but he uses his powers for evil. Michael Moore persuades his viewers by deceiving them, and this site exists for those who wish not to be fooled."

It would seem that debunking Michael Moore is a regular cottage industry. Free speech is a pretty cool thing, eh? Moore can make fictitious "documentaries" about whatever he wants, and I can say how dangerously stupid I think he is, and all without government cracking down on either of us.

Michael Moore is lucky that America isn't the shithole he wants you to believe it is. You'd never have heard of him at all if it was.

Thank goodness I live in a great society that would never allow a person to face criminal penalties for clicking a mouse button.

I've not done a linkdump in a long time, but my bookmark list is getting full of things I had half a thought of writing about, but never did. So now they're getting dumped here. Some old, some irrelevant, all crap, all the time. Par for the DTMan course..

I've been collecting these for a while, and don't remember where they came from. Just hat tip yourselves, as appropriate.

Chrenkoff is probably getting perma-linked in the left column, soon. More of the flag-rallying bullshit that I seem to like.

"Parable of the Ants" from Crusader War College. I prefer the "drain the swamp" analogy myself, but I know there are those of you out there who embrace the idea of just killing them all.

Fredrik K.R. Norman is a Norwegian living in....uhhh... Norwegia (that's a joke, for those humorless among you) with a congenial temperament. I'm not really sure how he can write so knowledgably about American affairs. Also a good candidate for perma-liking.

Merijn.org. I discovered that page recently when trying to squash the bug infestation that had invaded my WindowsXP. They've got some fixes there for some of the nasty malware out there.

Jill's Adventures in Baghdad. An army Colonel sharing her experiences in the sandbox. Like most every "from the front" webpage I've ever read, she seems to have a different view of events there than what Dan Rather tells the country every night.

7 million nematodes for sale, for those times when 6 million nematodes just wont cut it. Also have good prices on 9000 count ladybugs.

The Green Side. A webpage by a jarhead zero. Again, the view from people who are there is strangely different that what you read in the newspaper.

There we go. I've been deleting them from my favorites as I've been putting them here, and my list is nice and short again. Just the DTMan forum, and porn. The way it should be.

My grandfather was a son of a bitch to the end, and I can't stress enough what a great thing that is.

I'd planned since January to go to Orlando in June to celebrate my mother's... well, a big birthday for her, heh. Grandfather was having one of his bad spells, but it wasn't much different that any other spell he's had for the last ten years. Not to imply he was faking... old age can just suck, is all. We kept an eye on his health... we waited as long as we could to make plans, just in case... and he didn't make a decision either way... and then he died peacefully in the morning before everyone was supposed to go to Florida. Two of my sisters actually started driving the day before, and got the news in Atlanta that he had died in Toledo. I packed my car and left a day earlier than I had planned; and headed north instead of south.

Took the long way through the Appalachians from where I live to where I was going. Very scenic.

Arrived in Ohio with enough time to change and go to the last few hours of the showing. I was very pleased to see my grandfather had a smirk on his face... the old bastard knew he had disrupted everyone's Florida plans... God love him.

My grandfather had led, in my opinion, a very full life. I heard countless stories about his growing up poor during the Great Depression, my family's history of bootlegging during Prohibition (and after), of fighting the local school board and being the first kids in Toledo to wear blue jeans to school, of helping in the construction of the Inter Coastal Waterway, how he won World War II in Europe with the help of General Patton, how he captained an oil rig tender in the Gulf of Mexico, how he captained a survey vessel to map the area off the Ivory Coast for the oil companies. And it goes on and on.

This is a shot of him wearing E-7 stripes right before the Korean War. That's a long story in of itself. (My scanner is busted, and this blurry picture is the best my crappy digital camera could do.)

At his funeral the Masonic Temple had a ceremony for him. My grandfather, a former Masonic Grand Master, had not been an active Mason for fifteen years, but every year when it was time for dues to be paid there was a unanimous vote to waive his requirement and he was therefore kept as an active member.

The old timers in the local American Legion post sent him off with a 21 gun salute. One day I have to get around to taking them my DD-214 and joining the post.

A dove was released. It flew directly toward the nearest bar, which I found to be appropriate, even though I never knew him as a heavy drinker. I don't ever recall seeing him drunk, in fact. That's not to say I didn't get drunk many-a-time off the moonshine and fortified "wine" he made in his garage...

I don't know if when we die that's the end, or if there's an afterlife. If one day when I take the long walk I find myself in the next world, the first thing I'm going to ask God is, "What did you think the first time my grandfather corrected your euchre game?"

Twenty four hours after driving 750 miles to get to Toledo, I again packed the car and headed down I-75, Destination: Orlando. Mom had adjusted the dates of the house she rented, and we were still able to salvage most of that trip. Twenty four hours and one intense thunderstorm in Kentucky later, and I arrived.

Ten minutes after I arrived, I was drinking beer with the greens keeper of Tiger Wood's golf course. He said Tiger is pretty down to earth, and drops the f-bomb a lot. Funny.

Chilled out the rest of that day, and the next day we went to MGM Studios with all the nieces and nephews.

Long day. Got back to the house that night, took a dip in the pool, and got ready for the next day at...

I had my usual overwhelming desire to crush it... and I tried... but it turns out the Magic Kingdom has some powerful juju that makes everything I attempt to crush all blurry.

MGM is kind of geared toward kids, but the Magic Kingdom is geared toward kids big-time.

Got back to the house, took a dip in the pool (Marco...POLO!), and chilled out and prepared to leave the next day.

Sisters had earlier flights, so it was just me and the S.O., and Mom and her old man. Mom wanted to go see the PGA Hall of Fame in St. Augustine, so that's what we did.

The Castillo de San Marcos, built 1672-1695, served primarily as an outpost of the Spanish Empire, guarding St. Augustine, the first permanent European settlement in the continental United States, and also protecting the sea route for treasure ships returning to Spain. Although the Castillo has served a number of nations throughout its history, it has never been taken by military force. During the 18th century, the Castillo went from Spanish control to British and back to the Spanish , who remained in power in Florida until the area was purchased by the United States in 1821. Called Fort Marion at this time, The Castillo was made a National Monument in 1924 and became part of the National Park system in 1933. The park consists of the original historic Castillo fortress itself with its attendant grounds, some 25 total acres.

It was a overcast day, and drizzling rain more often than not. And it was a hot, humid drizzle. The best kind. This picture shows the bell tower in the background, and in the middle ground, the structure that looks like a pizza oven, actually is an oven... but not for pizza. It's where they heated up the cannon balls before they fired them at enemy ships; hot enough to start fires if they didn't sink them. The cannons are to the right of this picture.

Because of the crap day we didn't stay as long as we would have otherwise, so we wished mom a happy birthday one more time, and parted ways; they for the PGA H.o.F, and us for home in NC. Heading up I-95, we drove through Charleston, SC. I told the little woman to grab the camera because I was amazed at the size of the new bridge they were building...

The smaller bridge in the picture is the one we crossed, and it's a regular, huge bridge. Those new spans look massive in the picture, they were... ummm... even massiver in person. That isn't a trick of perspective. Those new spans are right next to the old bridge.

As we were crossing the bridge we saw something we didn't expect, the USS Yorktown.

That's the best pic we could get in a low profile car while crossing a bridge. We were already pushing a midnight ETA to get home, and we were rather road weary after 2500 miles in 7 days, so we decided to not stop.

T'was a long journey. The 2700 odd miles left me too weary to visit President Reagan in DC, which would have been a long day-trip, otherwise.

That's like the loser of a footrace saying, "Well, the other guy crossed the finish line first, but we expended all this energy in the race, so really we're all losers."

Just wrote a little letter. Here's a portion the article with which I took issue. The link I clicked (with dread) on the front page of cnn.com was "Saudi poll: Wide support for bin Laden."

Saudi poll: Wide support for bin Laden

By Henry Schuster
CNN
Tuesday, June 8, 2004 Posted: 8:24 PM EDT (0024 GMT)

(CNN) -- Almost half of all Saudis said in a poll conducted last year that they have a favorable view of Osama bin Laden's sermons and rhetoric, but fewer than 5 percent thought it was a good idea for bin Laden to rule the Arabian Peninsula.

The poll involved interviews with more than 15,000 Saudis and was overseen by Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi national security consultant.

It was conducted between August and November 2003, after simultaneous suicide attacks in May 2003 when 36 people were killed in Riyadh.

Obaid said he only recently decided to reveal the poll results because he felt the public needed to know about them.

"I was surprised [at the results], especially after the bombings," Obaid told CNN. The question put to Saudi citizens was "What is your opinion of Osama bin Laden's sermons and rhetoric?"

"They like what he said about what's going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. Or about America and the Zionist conspiracy. But what he does, that's where you see the huge drop," said Obaid, referring to the bombings that had already begun taking place inside Saudi Arabia at the time the poll was conducted.

He also said he would like to update the poll numbers in the wake of the recent series of terrorist attacks that have taken place in Saudi Arabia.

Forty-one percent said they favored strong and close relations with America, while only 39 percent said they had a favorable opinion of the Saudi armed forces, both results that Obaid also termed "surprising."
CNN.com

It irked me that if I had just read the headline and not the article, I would have had a pretty skewed impression of the actual poll results. So, I wrote to the author.

To: henry.schuster@cnn.com
From: gordon2 -at- dtman dot com
Subj: Your article, "Saudi poll: Wide support for bin Laden"

Wed 6/9/2004 12:32 AM

Greetings.

Allow me to open this email by saying I believe most major media sources, including CNN, to be very biased in their presentation of the news. That being said, I'll use your article as one of the reasons why.

The headline. I saw, "Saudi poll: Wide support for bin Laden." The first thing I thought was, "Great... most of them are still against us." When I got into the article, the first thing you see is "Almost half of all Saudis said in a poll conducted last year that they have a favorable view of Osama bin Laden's sermons and rhetoric." Why, pray tell, could the article not have more accurately been titled, "Saudi poll: Less than half support bin Laden." It certainly is an improvement, and maintains the same accuracy as the headline with which you ran. The only conclusion I can draw is that you have some reason for making it seem as bad as possible.

Now, let's talk about the word "support," which also appears in the headline. In the article you quote, "They like what he said about what's going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. Or about America and the Zionist conspiracy. But what he does, that's where you see the huge drop..." This constitutes support? Almost half like his ideas, but there is a "huge drop" when people are asked about his methods? This is "support," sir?

"Forty-one percent said they favored strong and close relations with America..." The title of the article could have been "Saudi poll: Wide support for America." 41% is, of course, almost half. The title of the article could have been exactly as accurate as it was made, and yet not have the negative spin.

Shame on you, sir. It's tripe like this that has the American people losing respect for journalists. The slant is obvious, and reputations are hard to repair once trust is lost.

Sincerely,
GORDON
www.dtman.com

Something came up, and I'm hitting the high road again. I have over 2000 miles of driving to do in the next 8 days. NC ---> OH ----> FL ---> NC. Yay.

Coûteaux (EDD). – (FR) Madam President, the most surprising thing about our debate is our surprise, for Israel's expansionist policy is the inevitable and predictable result of the growing imbalance in the region, the stability for which we bear much of the responsibility. Firstly that is because since 1967 most of our states, with the notable exception of France, have continued to give the State of Israel – a state that is growing increasingly self-assured and domineering – the impression that it can violate international law and UN resolutions with impunity.

In reality, here as elsewhere we have followed Washington and persist in closing our eyes to the theocratic excesses of this religious state whose governments are under the thumb of fanatical parties and minorities that are just as bad as the other groups of religious fanatics in the region. That is why we should envisage imposing sanctions on Israel.

There is, however, another serious imbalance for which we are in part responsible, namely the imbalance of forces. I have no hesitation in saying that we must consider giving the Arab side a large enough force, including a large enough nuclear force, to persuade Israel that it cannot simply do whatever it wants. That is the policy my country pursued in the 1970s when it gave Iraq a nuclear force. We have now destroyed it. So we will carry on with our policy of imbalance and what is happening today is merely the annoying but inevitable result of our collective blindness and cowardice.
Debates of the European Parliament
SITTING OF WEDNESDAY, 16 MAY 2001

Went to Vegas last month to see mi madre get married by Elvis, and that's the only reason. The end.

So, I was all set to go home that evening when I stepped out the front door of the hotel, and saw this...

And I decided hell... this looks like it could be a fun town. I decided to stay a few days and see the sights.

I found myself spending a lot of time at the blackjack tables, and when I decided I needed some air we'd hop in the car and travel a bit.

But what the heck is there to see in the vicinity of Las Vegas? Yeah, I didn't know either.

So, we wandered, and stumbled across a pretty interesting thing you've probably never heard of... "Hoover Dam."

I know, it's hard to believe nobody has ever heard of this huge thing out in the middle of the desert, but I swear it's there.

SMH from the DTMan forums got in the way, and she was accidentally crushed, as well.

To get a sense of scale, the structure arching over the opening is a vehicle bridge, and the white blur on the upper left of the arch is a car. Big hole.

Here's Mommy Dearest in the side mirror. She really was closer than she appeared.

On the last day of Gordo's Desert Adventure, everybody else's planes left about 12 hours before mine, so I had some time to kill.

In '98 I spent a pleasant week hiking through Zion Canyon, Utah, so I thought it would be nostalgic to return for a visit.

The road to Utah took me through a corner of Arizona, and I remembered that area being very scenic, and I was right.

Finally, my road took me to Utah. My first time there since August of 1998. Everything looked the same except for me.

The town of Springdale is nestled in a canyon formed by the Virgin River, which had a lot to do with forming the canyon called Zion.

It's a tiny little town consisting of restaurants, lodges, beds and breakfasts, outfitters, and homes for the people who run these things. The canyon is only wide enough most places that the town is all on one street.

One road into town, and the other end of that roads runs into the national park.

Interesting to note: when I was there in 1998, I visited the main Zion park lodge after a long hike to check out the gift shop and put the ol' dogs up for awhile. The place was packed with a crush of bodies. What I found most interesting is that 90% of these people were not speaking English. This is when I learned that the great majority of people who visited America's national parks weren't actually from America, and I found that to be a little sad.

The server girl from Beatrice, Nebraska I chatted up in the coffee shop on my return trip confirmed nothing had changed in six years.

After a most excellent, excellent trip down memory lane, I turned my horse toward Vegas, and the airport.

If you ever get even the most remote chance to visit this park of the country (assuming you don't already live there), I can't encourage you enough to make the effort to get there. The Grand Canyon is even in the vicinity, though I didn't go there this time. But I can recommend an incredible pizza place in Peach Springs, on old Route 66, run by the Hualapai indian tribe...

There's still a lot being said about the prisoner abuse in Iraq. So-called sworn testimony is being leaked to the public from detainees who just a few months ago were killing every Westerner in their gun sights and radius of their Improvised Explosive Devices. I already mentioned that I do not condone behavior that is at best unprofessional, and at worst barbaric, from members of my armed forces. The Courts Martial agree with me, and the first soldiers are already in the brig. The "Arab Street" wants more than prison time, of course. They want blood. But that's hardly surprising, is it.

Some of us pundits in the West think too much may be being made of this prison abuse "scandal.". We sometimes compare what Americans have done in this war compared to what our enemy is doing, and we wonder at the disproportionate amount of outrage. We don't understand why our opponents, both at home and overseas, don't understand that war is a brutal business. We don't understand why our countrymen only want to see and advertise the evil done by America, and not by what we see as a greater evil being done by our enemies, who picked the fight in the first place. We wonder whose side half of our countrymen are really on when they use free press and freedom of speech to disparage the war effort, and those fighting on the front lines, at every opportunity. Some of us even dare to suggest that some people will say anything if it were to aid a greater cause, particularly that of making sure Bush is voted out office in November.

For that we are accused of being goose-stepping Nazis. For that we are accused of being blinded by our own patriotism. For that we are accused of being full of flag-waving bullshit (Thanks to forum member TheCatt for my new favorite phrase).

Every day in American prisons humiliation and rape of prisoners is an every day occurrence, and has been for a very long time. It's so prevalent and well-known that it is a punch line in this country. "Watch out for your cornhole, bud." Everyone knows it happens, and the laws are set up so the prisoner has no legal way to protect him or herself from it by the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA). Enacted in 1996 contains a provision specifically preventing prisoners from suing prison officials for "mental or emotional harm unless they can also prove physical injury." This means if a prisoner is abused, and guards are looking the other way, the prisoner isn't going to survive long enough to see his complaint to it's conclusion. Humiliation would seem to fall under the "emotional harm" for which our fellow Americans in prison have no recourse.

Why is the sexual abuse and humiliation of American prisoners on a massive scale accepted and ignored, yet similar mistreatment of some terrorists in Iraq is such an outrage? I can only think of one reason. Highlighting the abuse of prisoners in America will neither get George Bush out of office, nor will it help prove America has become a dangerous imperialistic theocracy. To some people Bush must be removed from office at the expense of anything, including truth.

My old host, nexpoint.net, really hosed me. First they fail to have a redundant server set up for when the main server crashes. Then they fail to have an eta on the fix. Then they tell me I shouldn't lose any data. Then the best they can do is restore me a week later with data over 13 months old. Screw them.

Over the last 3 days, I've been transitioning this website to a shiny new host with a really good track record and reputation in the web host market. To expedite the learning curve on the new server with the new rules, I grabbed our resident PhD to help out a bit. How many PhD's you got working on your webpage? Yeah, I didn't think so. Between us, we got the server pretty much operational.

The forum couldn't be saved. The folks at iKonboard.com were very helpful, but the only answer they could give is that the way I was backing up data almost always results in a corrupted version of the data. They told me how to make backups safely, and apologized for the inconvenience.

The forum has been reinstalled, and as soon as I upload this update I'll be making the forum like it was last week, minus all the posts. You'll have to reregister.

May the wolves stay in the mountains, our women stay in our beds, and may our servers keep from crashing again.

While I'm waiting for tech support to get back to me on why the most basic cgi scripts aren't running for me, I'll tell a little story of something that happened yesterday.

As some of you know, I live near a very large Marine Corps base on the east coast of the United States. Last night the little woman and I went out to dinner, and as usual it looked like approximately 30% of the patrons of the steak house had jarhead haircuts.

At a table at my 2 o'clock, I could see 2 young military gentlemen sitting down to have dinner together. It reminded me of my own Marine days when the other NCO's and I would hit the town in the evenings to decompress after another training evolution. They were in my field of view, so occasionally my eye would wander to their table and I could see what they ordered, what they were drinking, etc. I wasn't really studying them, it's just part of subconsciously being aware of your surroundings. They drank their beers, they ate their steaks, and then the waitress brought a desert... a big plate of ice cream with 2 spoons, and put it between them.

Me: I can't believe I'm about to watch 2 devil dogs share a desert.
Woman: (glances at them) They're probably gay. They're probably navy corpsmen.

I was with a web host that while not 100% what I wanted, in general were getting the job done. Until last week when a "sever hardware failure" took the machine down and then, according to them, "corrupted all of our recent backups of your data." The best they could do was a backup from April 2003. Over a year ago. I guess when the server blew up, flames spread down the hall into their room full of tape backups, then down the road to their off-site backup storage facility. It was apparently one hell of a hardware failure.

Yesterday I signed a contract with a new web host, and began the transition. 98% of the data is good to go, but I'll have to work for a couple days to make things look like they looked on May 12. For the next 48 hours or so, DTMan is under construction again. I apologize for the dust.

In the two months between January and March 1991 between signing my enlistment papers and leaving for USMC basic training in San Diego, I spent a lot of time both in the gym and in the local bar talking to former Marines. My main "mentor" during this time was Sgt. Ricky H, a former USMC artillery NCO, who had completed a tour a few years prior. He had all kids of wisdom, one of the bits that stuck with me for some reason was, "It's best if you are never noticed. You get noticed for being really good, or really bad."

One of the things he warned me about was Mt. Motherfucker. He claimed it was a big hill that I would become very familiar with at Camp Pendleton. Having grown up in northwest Ohio, in what was called the "Great Black Swamp" up until the late 1800's, I didn't really have any perspective on what it was like to climb a hill. I'd done a few in Appalachia for fun once or twice, but that was a leisurely type of thing.

I filed "Mt. Motherfucker" in the back of my mind, and on March 18, 1991 I got on a plane in Detroit headed for San Diego.

Marine boot camp comes in 3 phases. The first phase, lasting approximately a month, is to break you down mentally and physically and begin weeding out the non-hackers. You're doing a thousand sit-ups a day, twice as many push-ups, miles of running, and lots of generally unpleasant activities.

Phase 2, which also lasts approximately a month, finds you learning field skills, including rifle marksmanship. For two weeks straight, 10 hours a day, you are either putting rounds down range, or learning to put rounds down range properly. The rest of phase 2 is spent learning field skills, and "humping." No, not that humping. A proper Marine hump is where you put your pack on your back, and force march for speed X number of miles. They give you a 7 mile hump with just water on your belt as a warm-up, but 3 days later is a 12 miler with 60 pound packs. 12 miles was, after that point, the shortest hike I took in my 4 year enlistment, but that first one hurt the most. It hurt more than the 25 miler two years later. "Excruciating" is not an exaggeration. The last mile was in loose beach sand... that's where I was fighting the blackout.

Then there's the 2 weeks spent "in the field," which to a civilian looks like camping. This is where we spent time learning how to patrol, egress helos and beach landing craft, secure a hot LZ, navigate live-fire obstacle courses, and of course, more humping. It was a hot, dry, and dusty 2 weeks in the southern California desert.

We managed to survive the field, and the morning we were to hike out was also another 12 mile hike. Imagine our surprise when 4 miles in we turned a bend and found our Drill Instructors actually smiling at us and welcoming us to Mount Motherfucker.

Our company was going up one platoon at a time. We were platoon 1030, the middle of the series, so we were going second. We were formed up in 2 ranks, and the DI's were quickly checking our gear. "Tighten down your trash" they yelled. "You don't want your shit coming loose." "Just focus on the man in front of you. The only reason you should quit is if you pass out or die. Anything else is unacceptable."

I realized the incline was such that I could hold out my arm in front of me, and with only the slightest of bending touch the dirt. Soon after I was beginning to realize how hard it was maintaining speed up a steep incline with a full pack. And soon after that I realized we weren't half way up, and I was approaching the wall. I could feel my failure level approaching fast, and we just kept going and going, and the top of the hill wasn't getting any closer. I staggered a little.

Then I saw in between our two columns a recruit that had been up the column from me had given out, and had reeled. I watched my Senior Drill Instructor, Sergeant Seabrooks, take off the man's pack and put it on his own back, in addition to his own. Sergeant Seabrooks now had over 120 pounds on his back, and was still half dragging the whipped recruit up the hill. I forget what he was yelling at the time, but it was half-derogatory and half-motivational, as par.

It made my own burden seem trite, and I reached down deep and hauled my ass up the mountain. I was half unconscious by the top, but so was everybody.

The last platoon reached the top and the company formed. The company commander, a Captain whose name I can't remember said, "Good job recruits. Let's do it again."

I go to the beach for a week, and look what y'all do... you let the diplomats rob the Marines of victory in Fallujah, and a bunch of retarded MPs take pictures of themselves breaking rules of the Geneva Convention concerning the treatment of POWs.

Anyway, Leisher (remember him?) messaged me with an idea for a front page post, so here's the result:

This is what the Muslim world calls torture. (The powder on the arms looks like they were being deloused, no?)

I can't think of anything witty for this pic. Just a stupid army girl who isn't far from serving some time in Leavenworth, more than likely. Unsupervised kids embarrassing some Iraqis. Shock/outrage/yawn.

This is the Islamacist response to allowing an infidel female to embarrass proud Muslim men: Moments after this photo was taken, the American in orange was beheaded, it was filmed, and al-Jazeera aired it. That reminds me of a primitive culture that probably wouldn't be missed if eradicated.

I won't expect the Muslim world to have any perspective in this situation, as they couldn't possibly hate America after these photos were released than before they were released, but I expect a little free thought from anyone brought up in a liberal western country. I expect about half of you out there will be able to think about this situation beyond its political aspects, personally.

What those retarded American army MPs did was wrong. My America sets the example for the rest of the world; behavior exhibited in the above photos just proves we sometimes have the same weaknesses as the 8th century assholes we are fighting.

American dairy farmer and Mississippian Thomas Hamill, kidnapped three weeks ago in Iraq in an insurgent attack on his convoy, escaped and was rescued by coalition troops today. He led them to the house where he had been held, and troops took 2 armed Iraqis. What really makes me respect the man is that after arranging for the kicking of the asses who captured him, he called home to comfort his family, but told them he wouldn't be home for awhile because he still had more work to do... which for me translates to "I have more asses to kick."

A commenter at Right Thinking made this funny quip: "A corporal in the convoy reported that Hamill seemed to be having difficulty walking, due in large part to his enormous balls."

That man truly embodies the American love of kicking ass for a good cause. We don't kick the asses we know we can kick... we kick the asses that need kicking. And you can quote me on that.

Acidman made a good post the other day (not to imply that his posts usually suck. They dont). He was recollecting a man he used to work with who would eschew the bureaucracy in his company in order to get the job done correctly, which is, of course, a "Damn the Man" trait. He tied his memory of that man to the actions of the "Religion of Peace." He quotes from this article:

Well, we sure don’t want to frighten, offend or endanger anybody, do we? That’s just too much diversity to handle. I mean, somebody might get hurt.
We could fill the newspaper every morning with mobs of fanatical Muslims. They can’t get along with their neighbors on much of the planet: France, Chechnya, Bosnia, Indonesia, Spain, Morocco, India, Tunisia, Somalia, etc. etc. etc. Can anybody name three ongoing world conflicts in which Muslims are not involved? Today, where there is war, there are fanatical Muslims. We might quibble about who started what conflicts, but look at the sheer number of them.

There may be a silent majority of peaceful Muslims – some live here – but that did not save 3,000 people in the World Trade Centers, the millions gassed and butchered in the Middle East, the tens of thousands slain in Eastern Europe and Asia, the hundreds blown to bits in the West Bank and Spain, or the four Americans shot, burned and hung like sausage over the Euphrates as a fanatical minority of Muslims did the joyful dance of death.
The News Herald

I believe that the "joyful dance of death" is what pisses me off so much about Islamic assholery. These people have festered in the sand for several hundred years and done absolutely NOTHING to contribute to civilization during that time. In fact, their goal seems to be to tear down the civilization that ran off and left them festering in the sand with their hatred and their barbarian religion. (And if I offend any devout Muslims with that statement, tough shit. When you stop stoning your wimmen and encouraging your children to strap bombs to their bellies, we'll talk. In the meantime, kiss my Cracker ass.)

Those people are our enemies. They fully intend to kill us all if they have the chance; then, they will mutilate our bodies and celebrate with a joyful dance of death. I don't want to sit still for that kind of treatment. I want to kill those dumbass fuckers before they kill me or mine.

Sure, they're a bunch of uncivilized camel-humpers still mired in the 16th century. But they are fanatical and that makes them dangerous. A fanatic understands only one thing: brute force. I say we bring brute force to them before they bring it to us.

I've been reading Rob for a while now. I wouldn't describe him as politically correct.

Anyway, I'm heading to the beach tonight or tomorrow. Got family in town, and they rented a big house on a nearby island for the week. I'll more than likely be gone for a few days, so posts will be absent during that time.

Looks like some scumbag American soldiers in Iraq were abusing Iraqi prisoners. I'm not going to make any excuses for them or try to spin it. As hard as it is for me to believe, sometimes you have reminders that even the most pristine waters can contain sharks.

What pisses me off even more is that I know those soldiers are the vast exception to the rule, which makes it impossible for me to condemn the entire French population for shit like this. As much as I'd like to say, "France sucks" at this moment, I am forced to concede that the desecration of those graves was more than likely done by scumbags who were the exception rather than the rule.

Don't get me wrong... there are plenty of other reasons why France sucks. This just can't be one of them.

As some of you know, I flew to and from Las Vegas recently. On the way home I had to make a call from the airport, and didn't have my cell phone on me. Having had the 1-800-CALL-ATT commercials drilled into my subconscious, I found a payphone and used it to call home.

Just got the phone bill. 15.0 minute phone call, $22.00. "It saves them money" my big black ass. Looks like I got screwed by the fine print, somewhere.

Has there ever been a movie made with a young, attractive mother with a young child, and the child has a terrible accident, and no matter where the mother is, she looks up from whatever she is doing and has a "great disturbance in the force" moment? Has an attractive movie mother ever come home from a really good day at work and been completely blindsided with the knowledge that her young child has been involved in a terrible accident? Because I don't think there has, and movies teach me that all mothers have a psychic bond with their children.

I've been reading a lot of web pages for the last few days of people celebrating various Americans' deaths in the war of terror, including NFL player Pat Tillman who turned down an NFL contract worth millions to be an Army Ranger. It angers me to read these things, but I understand that freedom of speech includes people being free to say things that I find... distasteful.

If I ever hear one of you scumbags disparage a dead serviceman in my presence, I will attack your ass without hesitation in an attempt to visit your folly upon your body. I fight hard, and as dirty as possible. I'll attack you from behind if I can, so you don't see it coming. And know what else? There isn't a jury outside of San Francisco that will convict me, as I was clearly provoked.

Keep being an asshole online, anonymously. Free country, after all. Just be careful sharing your views in public. You never know where I or thousands of men like me may be.

Just got back from seeing Kill Bill Vol 2. Good stuff. Different than Vol. 1, but good. Different but good.

There were, of course, previews before the main event. Hero looks like another cool Crouching-Tiger-type movie. Spider Man 2 is, of course, Spider Man 2.

Then there was The Day After Tomorrow. From the previews, it appears that mans' short sightedness finally bites us in the ass, and 'global warming' starts an ice age that has people... fleeing... New York City before the tidal waves and glaciers get there.

Now, I really liked Independence Day, because it was a cool look at Earth being invaded by aliens, and what mankind would do to survive them.

I really liked Armageddon because it showed an Earth threatened by an asteroid the size of Texas, and we sent two space shuttles full of rowdy men with nuclear weapons to take it out. Plus, Paris, France got flattened as an afterthought for no good reason at all.

But The Day After Tomorrow? Looks too stupid and unrealistic. Even the title is alarmist as it echoes the 80's TV movie event, "The Day After" which showed "life" in the Midwest after a full nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union, which was so traumatic that it influenced Ronald Reagan himself to pursue disarmament treaties with the Evil Empire.

My wild ass guess is that the opening credits will appear over scenes of gridlock of bumper to bumper, pollution spewing SUV's. Lots of close-ups of tailpipes. I think I'll be skipping this movie.

Operation Vegas 1/2004 was a success. Didn't come home rich, but had more hours at the blackjack tables than I can remember. And that's the point.

I was eating a ham sammitch today when I had a thought. It concerned definitions. Specifically, I had something like an insight into what it means to be a liberal and a conservative in 2004.

Liberal: Here's a bunch of things I want you to not do. (SUVs pollute too much, nobody needs to own a "terrorist-grade assault rifle")
Conservative: Well, most of these things on your list are squashing a lot of individual freedoms.

I'm not talking about Bush and Kerry. Both of them will blur whatever lines they need when it comes time to win in November (though I think Bush not as much, which is why he inspires so much hate). I'm talking extremely generalized terms. Liberals like the idea of a nanny state, because individuals more often than not can't be trusted to do the "right thing." Conservatives want the opposite. Smaller government, let people make as much money as they can, and let peeps do whatever they want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. That means they can buy their Hummer H2, wear fur, shoot whatever gun they want, and NOT give their money to the poor, if they don't choose to.

At least that's the kind of conservative I am, and I do tend to be a role model and trend setter. Which may explain why so many people hate me... heh.

I've really procrastinated on getting pictures posted from last year's German American Festival in Oregon, Ohio. I'm flying to Vegas in 3 days and had expected to take more pics for this page, so I reckon I'd better get the GAF pics posted, first. I think I'm mostly of German stock, with maybe some Scot or Irish mixed in. Mom can correct me if I'm wrong. I like the GAF.

Here's the DTMan Forum's very own "UnkBill" signing up for the "Steinstossen." For those of you who don't speako, that's a contest where you throw a really heavy rock for distance. If memory serves, the men's rock is 138 pounds. It just occurred to me that a young, plump German wife probably weighs that, approximately. Interesting. Maybe in the olden days it was called the "Frau-tossen." Arr arr, German humor.

He's girding his loins. Getting his mind right. Well, maybe that other guy is girding Unk's loins... ambiguous camera angle.

Launch... well, just pretend there's a pic here while the rock is in the air. My camera sucks.

Unk came in 3rd place for the festival, if I recall, getting beaten out by the Ohio State record holder. When asked later how he felt about his performance, he had this to say:

Being a GERMAN American Festival, there was, of course, copious amounts of beer and sausage on hand. I love beer and sausage.

After drinking a couple gallons of beer, the only thing I can think to do is fire some weapons, so we did that.

Target was 5 teeny tiny circles, the gun fired these little pellets at high velocity. It was almost a grown-up's BB gun. The sights on my rifle were off... I aimed center mass on my first 2 shots, and was exactly one inch below the target each time. The 3rd round I adjusted my aim with Kentucky windage, and was quite a bit closer. I adjusted myself again for shots 4 and 5, and had 2 bulls.

And that's most of the day, besides when we were drinking beer and Jagermeister while watching the German folk dancing. Jagermeister, Jagermeister, I thought you were my friend...

Hopefully I'll have the Vegas pics from this coming weekend posted faster than the GAF pics were. Posted.

Every now and then when surfing, something you wouldn't ever purposely look for catches your eye, and you stop and give it a ganders. In this case it was the headline, "Battling bullies: Turn to school counselors for help."

My first thought was, "Oh, good for you, that'll teach the boy self reliance." My second was, "$10 bucks says there isn't a father in the picture." And the third was, "This internet therapist is going to rip this woman a new one."

Answer: Bullying, which can include physical violence, threats, taunting or even spreading rumors, has gotten a lot of attention in the past few years with so many accounts of bullied kids retaliating and demonstrating shocking violence at school.

...

“We accept more violent behavior in this country than any other country would allow,” says Spivak.

...

Parents should never try to deal with their children's bullies on their own, experts say. Think back to that episode of "The Brady Bunch" where Mr. Brady confronts a bully who's giving one of his kids a hard time. He returned home to show Mrs. Brady a big fat shiner.

...

Strategies such as confronting the bully or his or her parents will likely exacerbate the problem. "It's important to try to create a positive process around it in terms of helping the kid who is getting bullied feel better but also dealing with trying to understand what's going on with the kid or kids who are doing the bullying," says Spivak.

In short, both parties need help. And the happiest results come when they get it from counselors, therapists or other school officials who have been trained in handling this serious issue.

In the first place, who put the French in charge of this article? This is the same, "Never take unilateral action" bullshit that causes so many other problems. The lesson you are teaching this "sweet, sensitive" boy is that Momma will solve all your problems, always. This kid is a dysfunctional marriage waiting to happen. Some woman is going to meet him, find him incredibly "sweet and sensitive," and 3 years into the marriage realize she married a pussy momma's boy, and leave with the baby.

Or, you can teach the "sweet, sensitive" kid to throw a punch, defend himself, and stop being such a fucking victim. That's why he gets picked on in the first place.

For those who don't know, Slashdot is a venerable (as web pages go) page dedicated to all things technical (or just otherwise geeky). It is so popular that when they link an article for discussion, the link gets so much traffic that the computer serving the page is often overwhelmed and is effectively shutdown... a phenomenon called the "Slashdot Effect."

I've read Slashdot since the late 90's. I understand about 50% of what is discussed, as it runs the entire scope of technology, from Microsoft Windows to open source Linux to hardware routers to phone switches. The most interesting part of these articles for me has always been the related comments from users... some very smart people respond to and expand on whatever the article was about. Each comment is "scored" by a Slashdot moderator, so if someone is just being an idiot, his comment will be rated low enough that most users won't even see it. The highest score is a 5, the lowest I've seen is a -1. The default setting for the board is to show only articles rated 1 or higher, but you can view the -1's if you want to.

This brings me to my problem. Lately, almost every conversation thread has fielded comments about politics, and it is getting rated "5, Insightful," instead of a more deserving "-1, Flamebait." Article about the Mars Rovers? It won't take long to see a comment rated 5 talking about how President Bush is cutting space funding, whether true or not. Article about the Pentagon's proposal to put weapons platforms in space? You get this high-rated comment:

How does this bullshit relate to the article at all? Fine, somebody has an opinion, but I don't read Slashdot to read how somebody hates George Bush in every article discussion.

Rather than do the typical knee-jerk US-Bashing, lets examine this. China is wanting to go into space. Do we REALLY want China to be the first ones with space weapons pointing back at us?

We'll have a space weapons gap!

Why not negotiate a treaty to keep weapons out of space without a global threat, as determined by the UN? Well, that would just be UnAmerican. We should just put weapons up there. That'll show those commie bastards.

Even to the most hawkish, another cold war can't be that appealing. Why not nip it in the bud?

I don't blame the idiots posting this stuff, idiots are everywhere and can't help being idiots. I blame whomever is at Slashdot scoring these opinions as high as they are. Can't we have just one information outlet not tainted with political vitriol?

Had the idea months ago, and put it all together today in about ten minutes. Made up the webpage with some words I pulled out of my ass, and used the actual phone numbers for the White House, heh. Made up the story in the feedback thread with an old farm report from 1986, and changed it just enough to seem menacing and ominous. Then, at exactly 12:01 am, April 1, GREENWICH MEAN TIME, I put the joke page online.

I got some of you! Somebody called somebody else and my Mom overheard, got worried, and actually called the White House number. I really should feel bad... but I laughed and laughed when I heard about it.

In 1994 I was still in the Marines, and my unit happened to be on fast react alert on April 1. North Korea at the time was being stupid, and we all knew there was a chance we could get the call to go at any time... and it being April 1, I called home and told the S.O. that we were getting shipped out in 3 hours, the base was closed, and I wouldn't be able to come home before getting on the plane. I let her get good and upset, then said, "April Fools." She hung up on me. In a way, I'm still paying for it...

So, it looks like it takes me 10 years between fooling peeps with April Fools pranks. Just wait and see what I do in 2014.